West Allis Baby Project: Enjoying the Outdoors with a Toddler

Those of you that know me, know that I am an avid outdoors-woman. Camping, mountain biking adventures through the Rockies, hiking, water-skiing, etc.

But something happened in May 2011. I had a little burrito. And my life (and my lifestyle) instantly changed.

My experience has been this: Years ago, I thought, "I will not give in to the demands of a child and put my outdoor lifestyle on hold." That has not turned out to be true. Weston and I went camping last month out in Utah with my sister, and yes, it was challenging. First of all, he did not want to fall asleep, and when he finally did, he did not sleep soundly nor long enough. It wasn't a disaster, but it was a good reminder that neither he nor I were accustomed to sleeping in a tent with each other.

I imagine that had Nate and I taken Weston camping frequently throughout the past 15 months, then perhaps it would have been a little easier. I have read that people say it's not that bad camping with a baby, as long as they're not crawling or walking yet. Then after about age 3 or so, it gets easier to camp as they're able to understand adult directions and consequences. So it seems that there's a window of a couple of years where it's fairly difficult to camp with a child.

We're currently in that window. Weston wanted absolutely nothing to do with lying down for bedtime while in the tent. It was much more exciting to run around and push on the sides of the tent and bounce back onto the squishy sleeping bags and air mattress. I tried doing all the normal bedtime routines, like reading a story to calm down a bit. Forget it--the zippers on the tent are A.MAZ.ING!

A couple of weeks ago, we took a little family vacation to the Red River Gorge in Kentucky to meet up with my dear friend from college and her hubby. They were going to camp and wanted to know if we wanted to share their site with them. I instantly flashed back to how sleep deprived I was on Friday morning after our camping experience in Utah. I checked the weather--in the low 90s with 80-90% humidity. How would he nap in that?

I googled "camping with toddler" and read a comment from someone about how our ancestors lived in the wilderness and so there should be no reason as to why we can't take our children camping. I'm all for that, buddy, but our ancestors also didn't have tents set up in the blazing sunshine, and they had innovative ways to deal with the elements that may or may not be available to us (like sleeping under a rock overhang to keep cool at night).

So, I made the decision to rent a tiny cabin for two nights that had A/C and a bathroom. It was still crazy trying to figure out how Weston was going to sleep in a one room place...we ended up setting up the pack and play in the bathroom, but realized that we couldn't close the door, so Nate took the shower curtain off the shower and hung it in the doorway to block out sound and light. It worked quite well. And I slept well both nights!